Boeing, Boeing, burned: Over half a billion dollars by Starliner in 2024 Boeing's CST-100 Starliner project has added a reach-forward loss of $523 million for the aviation giant, taking total losses for the program beyond the $2 billion mark. The aerospace giant's Form 10-K, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, revealed the number. A reach-forward loss is when estimates of total …
Not an obvious choice. Boeing assembles Starliner from a mixture of parts made in house and from parts that are bought in. SpaceX is far more vertically integrated and makes most if not all of their Dragon parts themselves. It is not clear that Boeing has anything SpaceX needs or even wants. SpaceX consider Dragon to be a cash cow. There will probably be some minor changes but there will never be a major overhaul of the design.
Long term (and I do mean long) the future of SpaceX human spaceflight will be Starship. The license upgrade from 5 to 25 orbital launches per year from Boca Chica currently going through public consultation does not provide anything like the number of launches required to human rate Starship for landing on Earth. The figure proposed for that was around 1000 successful upper stage landings before there is enough statistical data. Musk is not going to wait 40+ years. A license for 1000 launches per year for Boca Chica could appear by executive order. Likewise the environmental impact studies for launching Starship from Cape Kennedy could come back Finding Of No Significant Impact without the delay required to collect evidence. That 1000 figure might get reduced to 10. Any resulting deaths will not make the news because the NTSB now reports accident statistics through X (assuming the NTSB even exists next year). SpaceX might not even bother with FAA licenses. After all, who is going to fine him for anything now?
Mostly you are thinking far too small. Musk controls the US treasury. Starliner is a wheel barrow full of cash lost in a cargo ship.
Mostly you are thinking far too small. Musk controls the US treasury. Starliner is a wheel barrow full of cash lost in a cargo ship.
You are correct. I need to recalibrate the 'dystopia' setting on my thought processes.
(f*** me, this year just gets more and more depressing. I'm starting to feel nostalgic for 2020 and the simplicity of only having to worry about a global pandemic)
does not provide anything like the number of launches required to human rate Starship for landing on Earth
A license for 1000 launches per year for Boca Chica could appear by executive order.
Wouldn't an executive order be a faster way of rating Starship for passengers? I mean if you're king for a day (or as long as your back account holds out) why not just go for it, skip the rules entirely?
There are 7 astronauts on the ISS. 4 can leave in the crew Dragon currently docked there. The other three can leave in the Soyuz. NASA would like to keep the crew 9 on the ISS until after crew 10 arrive. The crew 10 Dragon is delayed because SpaceX want to run additional tests. If anyone is stranded it it us lot on Earth.
Seems more likely that any professional astronaut - that is, competent and competitive people who've gone through a long, intense and difficult process getting ready to fly in space - would feel delighted to have more time in space. Though they might not be at liberty to say so. ;)
These losses were incurred because Boeing was managing the program according to their desired profitability and hardly caring about whether it was sufficient to design and build a capable manned spacecraft. This now comes back to bite them...hard.
I'm still betting Boeing will exit the manned spacecraft business, but management hasn't, as of yet, decided. Maybe they worry their exit will influence their other defense contracts.
Boeing has huge contracts with many USG agencies such as the NRO. They "work" for Boeing quite nicely, I assume.
What you see in this article is probably 1/10th of Boeing space activities. Just because one part of a company has problems, does not mean all other parts must have issues.
https://www.boeing.com/space/boeing-satellites#government
Their other programs are mostly cost-plus or "black" programs where money isn't an issue and they can spent as much and be as profitable as they like. Starliner is a fixed-price contract and I'm pretty sure senior management looked at it and said to the program manager: "Well, we got $4.3 billion so you get $2 billion to build it and the rest is profit. Good luck!"
Come on guys, even that "idiot" Elon Musk can do it!
Perhaps it had something to do with a little thing called DEI? ;)
Companies will follow Boeing and others’ lead as they acknowledge DEI’s flawed approach. DEI not only oversold imaginary return on investment that could not be measured or verified, but it did so at the cost of expending critical resources and tying up head count earmarked for DEI activities instead of activities that boost performance and capability. There is no way to keep production in focus while also allowing an externally focused bureaucracy with weak ideas to drive culture. In the near term, corporate America is increasingly aware that DEI does not mitigate or eliminate bias or the stereotypes that fuel it. Rather, DEI is simply transferring bias and stereotypes directed at one group to another group. Courageous leadership is finding its way back into the C-suites and finally forcing the logical audit of DEI rhetoric, narratives, and claims that was previously avoided.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/why-boeing-killed-dei
DEI isn't and never was the problem. So-called "affirmative action" and quotas are and were the problems. The US got DEI wrong and are now setting themselves back years if not decades in Diversity, Equality and Inclusion. They set themselves up to fail, partly because of those who fundamentally hated the idea and went out of their way to destroy it by deliberately misinterpreting it. All evidenced by the number of Trumpers posting over the last few days equating DEI with employers being "forced" to to hire under qualified non-whites. Something which is not only untrue, but only relates to only a small part of what DEI is about.
Particluarly worrying for the women astronaut up there who, after today's Nasa whitewashing, never existed.
The christian nationalist faction of the US government want women at home making apple pies.
NASA Ordered to Remove Anything About ‘Women in Leadership’ From Its Websites: Report
"This is a drop everything and reprioritize your day request."
Things not looking good for SLS, Boeing announced potential 400 layoffs in SLS project which would be about 1/3 of the people assigned to the project. Citing they are expecting changes in the contract. The need to give 60 days notice which roughly ties in when congress announce new funding for NASA.
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